


Out of Time

by Syaunei



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, F/M, Lack of Communication, M/M, Post-Canon, Section 31 (Star Trek), Stream of Consciousness, Tragedy, spy julian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28435884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syaunei/pseuds/Syaunei
Summary: I have time.That's what Julian used to tell himself.
Relationships: Elim Garak/Kelas Parmak, Julian Bashir & Elim Garak, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak, Julian Bashir/Ezri Dax
Comments: 53
Kudos: 51
Collections: Star Trek: Just in Time Fest





	Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Normally, I am abysmal at deadlines, but this challenge had me both inspired and motivated. I wrote this the very next day after it was announced. 
> 
> It's a complete departure from the way I write (not in form but in substance). 
> 
> This is not a happy story, and that's also why I had to write a second piece for the challenge, to get the pain out of my system.

_I have time_.

That's what Julian used to tell himself.

There was time – to wear down the Chief's gruff defenses, to keep Jadzia's mischievous brand of friendship, to earn his peers' respect.

There was time to get to know Garak.

Over lunches and endless friendly debates.

There would always be time. Even if he had to reschedule occasionally. Even if there was the odd mission.

 _I have time._ He reassured himself, ignoring the niggling voice in the back of his head.

Despite the threat of infiltration. Despite the war.

Despite a girl younger even than him practically hanging off of Garak.

It was to be expected.

 _I have time_ – he repeated like a mantra, even as the lunches turned infrequent.

He gave himself time to heal from the fact that nobody – not even the man closest to him – realized he'd been replaced by a changeling.

The hurt went deep.

He was trying to figure out what to do with the truth of Garak's parentage – a dangerous knowledge handed over like an illicit gift. It was sacrilegious to listen in on someone's _shri-tal_ unless you were the intended recipient.

 _I have time_ , he took to telling himself.

After all, they were still on the same side of the war. For now.

Then Garak tried to murder an entire race.

With him on the planet's surface.

Failure should have made him happy but he was adept at the ruthless calculus of war and imagined a world where Garak had succeeded. Perhaps that would have been kinder.

_I have time._

To get over it.

To bury the pain.

To fight with himself over whether he should go visit Garak in his prison cell or to leave him to rot.

To wake up in cold sweat, weeping.

To forget.

 _I have time_.

It rang hollow.

Then again, everything in this goddamn war rang hollow.

Jadzia's loss had eviscerated him.

He missed her like he'd miss a limb.

Much of the station's warmth had left along with her.

_I have time..._

Just enough time to get distracted by a pair of bright blue eyes.

Just enough time to pretend it was enough.

He tumbled into a relationship head-first, trying to forget.

But he'd chosen poorly.

For everything was a reminder.

Blue eyes.

Black cropped hair.

Sweet smile.

Spots, extending down and down, just like ridges he had never seen, save in diagrams.

 _I have time_ , he'd clung to the words even as grey fingers squeezed his shoulders for the last time.

He'd barely managed not to fall apart in front of the man.

That came later.

In the darkness of his quarters as Ezri dozed next to him, sated and content.

Open eyes stared at the ceiling as tears filled his ears, streaming into his hair and pillow.

_He's gone._

He's gone.

He's better off.

It's what he believes.

Especially when the letter comes.

The memoir.

Everything he'd ever wanted to know about Garak, from his earliest memories to his deepest thoughts.

He booked a holosuite for the entire evening, deleted all the characters, collapsed in a heap and wept.

 _I have time_ , he thought, bolstered by the subtext in Garak's letter.

He was still wanted, still welcome.

Ezri tried.

Therapy.

Julian refused it. It was too much, too soon.

He needed peace.

 _I have time_ , he reassured himself.

To heal.

To put the horrors of war behind him.

To live vicariously through the letters depicting a slowly mending Cardassia.

Ezri was spending all her time in training courses, determined to change career paths and he had been encouraging.

_I have time._

To think of what to say, even as he watched months pass by.

There was virtually nobody familiar left on DS9.

Only Nerys, whose eyes were stern and concerned.

And reproachful. As if she knew exactly what was growing inside him – restless and writhing.

 _I have time_ , Julian assured himself.

Even as Ezri left and they broke it off, both knowing they had reached the end of their path.

Even as mentions of a certain other doctor kept arriving in Garak's letters.

At first it was Parmak.

Then it was _Kelas_.

Julian hated himself.

Was it a uniquely Cardassian characteristic? Forgiving the man who had once been your torturer?

 _I have time_ , he choked on the words, alcohol burning down his throat.

He could wait.

Just until he was feeling less...

Like this.

And when Section 31 came knocking on his door again, he went willingly.

Anywhere but here.

Anything but this.

_I have time._

He was young.

He was becoming cynical.

And when a folder crossed his desk, a complete file on one Elim Garak, Castellan of the Cardassian Union, he dropped the padd, the screen shattering.

The words were burned into his eyes – Kelas Parmak, Dr.; Personal aide and lover.

He had known, of course.

But he also hadn't.

He didn't want to know.

 _I have time,_ he kept saying.

He could outwait this.

The strained political situation between their States.

Garak's liaison with the _other_ doctor.

The one who seemed more like a doctor than Julian currently was.

It did not escape him that Garak had been right.

There was nothing glamorous about being a spy.

 _I have time_ , he wrote in a personal log that he would delete every day because it was unsafe to keep any sort of permanent record.

He watched.

The more Cardassia blossomed, the more lost he felt.

Garak didn't need him.

When a colleague asked if he was alright, Julian's face turned to stone.

Time was meaningless.

He could replay his memories, in excruciating detail and often did.

It was a drug.

It was torture.

He was as dependent on it as Garak had been on the wire.

_I have time. **I have time.** **I have time.**_

**__ **

Sarina knew.

She understood.

He took comfort in that.

They would lay next to one another in silence and his tears would go unremarked.

She would caress his back without a word and he blessed her for it.

_I have time..._

He wanted to reach out.

Cursed his cowardice.

Cursed the Universe.

But it wasn't safe.

Cardassia was still rebuilding. To mess with its frail political ecosystem at this juncture would be disastrous.

_I have time!_

Yet he didn't.

He was kept busy.

Sent undercover for months at a time.

Never to Cardassia, though.

It's like his handlers knew they would never see him again if they let him.

They were probably right on that count.

He re-read Garak's memoir.

Realized he had become every inch the broken man Garak had been – detached, able to pretend to be anyone but himself.

 _I have time_ , he'd whisper into the darkness.

A prayer.

A wish.

A singular shaft of light in the imperturbable darkness.

Time was irrelevant.

It blurred together like molasses, muddied like a puddle being marched through by an army.

First grays at his temples startled him. He wasn't that old, surely?

In a panic, he pulled up the newest image of the newly re-elected Castellan and subjected it to more scrutiny than he had in a long time.

The hair was still immaculately black.

But there was the slightest stoop to those proud shoulders, and a paleness to his soft ridges.

Realizing he had never done any of the things he wanted, never reached out with his hands where his mind fled and sought refuge, choked him.

 _Do I have time?_ He wondered for the first time, and realized he was trapped.

This was bigger than them, always had been.

He yearned for the simpler times.

For a spirited debate.

For a flash of bright blue eyes across the table.

With a sob, he stumbled to his dusty medkit and dosed himself with a sedative.

There was still time.

There had to be.

It couldn't end like this – a story like theirs.

If written, it would be an instant Cardassian classic.

He hated that he knew that to be a certainty.

Cardassia wanted to join the Federation.

His heart soared.

For the first time in decades, their interests aligned; both the unspoken and the spoken ones.

All that was left was to protect Garak while signing the charter.

When their eyes met across the room, it took everything he had not to fall at Garak's feet and weep clutching at his long, stately tunic.

Garak smiled, greeting him like an old friend.

The distance in his eyes was excruciating.

 _You waited too long,_ they said.

 _I have time_. Julian swallowed, knowing if they survived just one more day, that he would try.

He would throw all he was at Garak's feet, like a capitulating King tossing his crown away.

He could get asylum in Cardassia.

Maybe he could practice medicine again.

In a small clinic, somewhere.

Or maybe...

Maybe...

Garak could use another doctor.

Perhaps...

Any crevice, no matter how small, he would make his home.

He'd become so small over the years – he would fit.

 _I have time._ He tried to muster up the hope, to dust it off after having locked it away for too long.

It sprung from the dead ground like a wellspring.

Just watching Garak...

Just breathing the same air.

His mind was made up.

He would leave. He would.

He had the time.

All the time in the world.

And when Garak invited him for a night-cap, Julian accepted without thought.

Watching Kelas get dismissed made his veins thrum with a dangerous mixture of hope and despair.

He would fall apart with only Garak there.

Only with Garak did he have no masks.

_I have time._

_I have time._

_I have time._

He embraced Garak like he'd been dying without him – dying for so long, withered and starved and _desperate_.

The hands around him were gnarled with age, but sure and strong still.

He buried his face in Garak's neck and shuddered, clutching at his back like an abandoned child.

The words tumbled out of him, unstoppable.

I missed you.

I was watching from afar.

Cardassia is beautiful-

I am so proud, so so proud of you-

Please, take me with you, take me; I love you, I have waited for so long, please, Elim, Elim, _Elim_ -

You were right, you were always right, I want to be a doctor again, please, _please_ -

This kiss is soft, and gentler than anything he ever could have imagined.

He throws himself into it as recklessly as he'd thrown himself into this profession he'd once been so enchanted by.

Garak calls him _Doctor_ and _Julian_ and _my_ _Julian_ and when Garak coughs, Julian cracks a joke about having to breathe and not being so young anymore.

Except the coughing doesn't stop.

Julian fetches him a glass of water, but Garak is stumbling to a console and Parmak runs in like a pack of hell-hounds is on his trail.

“Elim!” He cries and is by his side in an instant, his write hair trailing behind him as if he were a vengeful wraith. “What have you done to him?” Parmak accuses Julian, “What have you given him!”

Julian is staring impotently, baffled by the accusation when Garak rasps:

“They used… him… He doesn’t know...”

Julian’s eyes meet Elim’s and there’s no reproach there, only softness.

Parmak reaches for his medical instruments, and Julian springs into action, overriding the replicator’s safeties and materializing a medkit.

He falls to his knees and is assisting, scanning, cursing whatever it is that is destroying Garak too fast to diagnose. Kelas is pressing several hyposprays to Garak’s neck and Julian can do nothing but stand there as it dawns on him that he may be covered with an unknown contaminant that could be making Garak worse even as he’s kneeling there uselessly.

“Get out!” Kelas growls at him and he scrambles to obey.

Garak’s choking and calling his name and Julian stumbles out of the quarters, mind screaming at him.

He wonders whether he should transport Parmak and Garak into the infirmary but then wonders who else was in on the conspiracy to-

Julian wails and transports himself into the infirmary, stuns the attending physician and locks the door.

He takes samples of saliva, blood, fabric and skin, trying to ascertain what he’d transmitted to Garak.

Had he given Garak the Judas’ kiss?

Was that what they had counted on?

He runs tests in parallel, burning through every option as fast as his augmented mind allows and realizes-

Allergen.

Imbued into the fabric of his clothes.

Innocuous to all but-

He encloses himself into a sterilization field until he knows all traces of the allergen are gone and punches in the appropriate formula into the replicator, materializing the hypospray that will reverse Garak’s extreme immune reaction.

He transports back into Garak’s quarters and is met with the sight of Kelas rocking back and forth, Elim’s head on his lap.

Julian rushes in, presses the hypo to Garak’s neck and is met by Kelas’ empty gaze.

They speak to him.

Gutted.

Empty.

Like all that was warm in the Universe had burned out forever.

And Julian knows.

Too late.

_Out of time._

And when they come for him, to arrest him-

He lets them.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies for any heart-break caused!


End file.
